Ronald Jenkees
Posted in music on 11/29/2012 07:27 pm by c5Ronald Jenkees released his third album Days Away today, so I suppose it’s a good time to mention him here.
Jenkees first became famous-on-the-Internet when he began posting videos of himself playing his synthesizer on Youtube. He began each video with the greeting “Hello, Youtubes!”
He’s certainly talented, and I’ve listened to his previous two albums many times. And his latest seems to be at least as good as the previous two.
From a 2008 interview:
I used to make beats and silly raps and share them with friends on my website, but that was the extent of my music career. I actually studied tech in college and always did music for the fun of it (still do!). I started posting videos on YouTube just to entertain people – mainly my old college friends. Eventually I started posting vids of myself playing music. I guess it mixed well with my goofiness on camera, but mainly that combination of being entertaining and letting loose helped me to not feel like such a show-off. The YouTube audience is the only reason I came out with a whole album and am now working on a second.
Days Away seems to be his first instrumental-only album, the others each featuring two rap songs (their titles helpfully including “rap” in parentheses). Whatever your opinion on rap, I’d recommend listening to 56K (rap) and Let’s Ride (rap) at least once–but try some of his other songs first.
I first came across Jenkees’ work when I played a game by the name of ‘Sequence’. I was impressed enough that I actually wanted to know who composed those tunes.
His songs have a great feel-good vibe to them, peppy or zesty or something, incredibly enjoyable.
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